Lived Architecture. Understanding the Meaning and Function of Roman Architectural Depictions

The following paper deals with the rep- resentation, visualisation and perception of monuments and architecture in the Ancient world. Scholarship on ancient images of architecture has displayed marked in- terest in the subjects represented (namely architecture and monuments) so as to propose or modify recon- structive hypotheses regarding the buildings being de- picted. On the contrary, studies have so far less widely investigated the modalities of display and observation we can reconstruct for these images. Moving from the concept of ‘lived architecture’ and reflecting on how built environments shape each and everyone’s knowl- edge of external reality, the paper will thus focus on some Roman depictions of monuments and architec- ture (e.g. the Anaglypha from the Forum Romanum, the ‘riot fresco’ from Pompeii, the Columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius). In doing so, it will suggest some of the reactions such images might have stimulated in ancient viewers, eventually concluding that depictions of architecture and spaces can be fully interpreted as expressions of the interactive relationship between hu- mans and the environment/landscape.